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Brisbane – Novak Djokovic said his recently retired rival Andy Murray was bringing a unique perspective as his new coach and he was eager to put into practice what the duo have discussed when he begins his season in Brisbane. Djokovic, a 24-time Grand Slam champion, added fellow former world number one Murray to his team last month and will work with the Scot until the end of the Australian Open next month before deciding on their future. “He has a unique perspective on my game as one of the greatest rivals I’ve had. He knows the pros and cons of my game,” said Djokovic, who spent 10 days recently with Murray preparing for the 2025 campaign. Source link

Protecting the planet is a global endeavor that only works if countries agree to take collective action. Judging by how the most important climate negotiations went this year, things aren’t going well. In 2024, talks to halt plastic pollution, protect biodiversity and end desertification all failed. Meanwhile, a deal at the COP29 summit left developing nations unhappy with the amount of money agreed upon to help them battle global warming and avoided mentioning the need to move away from fossil fuels. “It has become increasingly more difficult to come to an agreement that is ambitious yet feasible and that will address the problem at hand,” said Maria Ivanova, director of Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. “Issues like climate change and plastic pollution are inherently systemic, cross-sectoral, and embedded in economic structures.” Global environmental agreements have never been simple. But political polarization, the growing influence of multinational corporations and strained government budgets have made countries less willing to compromise. “By the time we get to a text or to an agreement that has a consensus, it is so diluted that, ultimately, it’s almost nothing,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey-Gomez, Panama’s special representative for climate change, who attended all four major international climate negotiations this year. Here’s a look at how some of the main global talks around climate and the environment fared in 2024. Climate activists hold banners outside the venue of the COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. | Bloomberg Climate change Nearly 200 countries agreed in Baku, Azerbaijan, to triple funds available to help developing countries confront rapidly warming temperatures at COP29 in November. But the talks were, at times, openly hostile and produced an agreement that even many supporters saw as insufficient and disappointing. Rich countries pledged to provide at least $300 billion annually by 2035 through public finance as well as bilateral and multilateral deals. The agreement also calls on nations to unleash a total of $1.3 trillion a year, with most of it expected to come through private financing. The talks kept “the multilateral system alive,” Monterrey-Gomez said in Baku. Yet the failure to deliver on key promises means efforts to to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius are “dead,” he said. South Korean environmental activists hold a banner reading “Citizen’s march to save the planet from plastic” during a campaign to reduce plastic use in Seoul on Dec. 3. | AFP-JIJI Plastic pollution Despite overwhelming public and business support, negotiators in Busan, South Korea, failed to reach consensus on cutting plastic production and phasing out dangerous chemicals at what was supposed to be the culmination of two years of talks on a global plastics treaty. Progress was blocked by oil suppliers including Saudi Arabia and Russia. Boosting the use of plastics, which are made from fossil fuels, is a crucial growth area for the industry as electric vehicles and renewables erode demand for crude. Countries fighting for a legally binding treaty admitted they need to do more. “We should have improved our coordination,” Camila Zepeda, Mexico’s chief climate and biodiversity negotiator, said in Busan. “We are realizing that we need the attention of everyone.” Negotiators aim to reconvene the talks next year. There is rising support among the majority of countries to limit the production and consumption of plastics, restrict harmful chemicals and phase out single-use products like cutlery. Biodiversity loss The COP16 meeting in Cali, Colombia, ended without an agreement to advance a landmark biodiversity-protection pact adopted two years ago. Countries disagreed about the creation of a new global nature fund and delegates started to leave as the meeting ran into overtime. The summit did achieve some of its goals. Countries will move forward with a new Cali Fund to protect nature, to be paid into by companies that sell products, such as pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, based on genetic data collected from the natural world. But what was dubbed at the outset as a “COP of implementation” still fell short of ambitions. The majority of parties failed to submit their plans to meet the 2022 pact, and rich nations pledged just a trickle of new money. Delegates arrive at the conference center where the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, UNCCD COP16, was opened in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Dec. 2. | AFP-JIJI Desertification The COP16 gathering in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in December sought to combat desertification, but delegates failed to agree on a global mechanism for tackling drought. The talks were aimed at financing early-warning systems and resilient infrastructure in poorer countries which are the most vulnerable. Scientists have warned that more than 75% of the Earth’s landmass has become permanently drier over the past three decades due to human activity and climate change. What’s next? The rate at which international environmental agreements are made has slowed significantly from a peak in the early 2000s, says Jean-Frederic Morin, a professor at Laval University in Canada. But that’s more likely because so many already exist, rather than talks becoming more challenging, meaning negotiators will need to shift their focus from new treaties to improving and strengthening existing deals. “We tend to be myopic, seeing recent challenges more clearly while forgetting those of the past,” Morin said. “Negotiations were, and remain, difficult.” One way to kickstart more ambitious environmental agreements would be to trigger voting among countries instead of trying to reach consensus when negotiating deals, said Panama’s Monterrey-Gomez, who noted that many historical conventions were taken through a simple majority or two-thirds vote. Another alternative is for small groups of states and multi-sectoral coalitions to form alliances that address common priorities, said Northeastern University’s Ivanova. “‘Minilateralism’ is emerging as an alternative, or at least a complement to multilateralism,” she said. “They are more nimble and can create momentum for broader adoption of shared goals.” Source link

OSLO – Finnish police said on Sunday they had found tracks that drag on for dozens of kilometers along the bottom of the Baltic Sea where a tanker carrying Russian oil is suspected of breaking a power line and four telecoms cables with its anchor. The Cook Islands-registered Eagle S was boarded by Finnish police and coast guard officials on Thursday and sailed into Finnish waters, where the crew of the impounded tanker is being questioned. Baltic Sea nations have been on high alert after a string of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. NATO said on Friday it would boost its presence in the region. A break in the 658 megawatt (MW) Estlink 2 power cable between Finland and Estonia occurred at midday on Wednesday, leaving only the 358 MW Estlink 1 linking the two countries, grid operators said. They said Estlink 2 might not be back in service before August. Finnish police suspect the Eagle S caused the damage by dragging its anchor along the seabed. Investigators have identified a “dragging track” but have yet to find a missing anchor, Sami Paila, tactical leader and detective chief inspector of Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation, said in a statement. “The track is dozens of kilometers in length,” Paila said. Photos taken of the Eagle S on Friday showed the vessel missing its port side anchor. Finland’s customs service believes the ship is part of a “shadow fleet” of aging tankers being used to evade sanctions on exports of Russian oil. The Kremlin said on Friday that Finland’s seizure of the ship was of little concern to it. Russia has denied involvement in any of the previous Baltic infrastructure damage incidents. Source link

Investigators probing the cause of the worst civil aviation accident ever in South Korea will focus on a bird strike and the unusual landing-gear failure in the final moments of the fateful flight that left all but two of the 181 occupants of the Boeing Co. 737 jet dead. The 737-800 aircraft operated by Jeju Air crashed at Muan International Airport on Sunday morning, skidding along the runway on its belly before smashing into a wall, where it exploded into a ball of fire. Only a pair of flight attendants survived. While the aircraft was almost entirely destroyed, investigators will have valuable data to work with as they reconstruct the event. One vital key will be a readout of the two flight recorders, which were already pulled from the wreckage, though one device is damaged and may need longer to analyze. Then there’s footage showing the aircraft during approach with one engine apparently flaming out, alongside videos of the plane coming in to the airport and sliding along the runway at high speed, appearing largely intact, before the impact with the embankment. The accident poses several unusual mysteries, and investigators have said it’s too soon to speculate what may have caused the crash. Midair bird strikes are rare but not entirely uncommon and seldom deadly because aircraft can operate on one engine for some time. Why the landing gear didn’t deploy also remains unclear, or indeed if there’s a link between that malfunction and the bird strike that was discussed between cockpit and control tower just before the landing. The pilot, considered an experienced captain with close to 7,000 hours of active duty, issued a mayday emergency call minutes after the control tower warned of a bird strike. He aborted his first landing, started a go-around and switched direction on the runway in his second attempt. The control tower granted clearance to land in the opposite direction, and officials said it’s unlikely that the runway length caused the crash. The Boeing 737 involved in the crash is a predecessor to the latest Max variant. It’s considered a reliable workhorse that passed routine maintenance checks, in a country with deep expertise for aircraft servicing. Around the world, there are more than 4,000 planes of its type in service. Even if one of the black boxes was damaged in the crash, the data storage units can often be reconstructed to aid the investigation. The fortified devices contain vital statistics and performance metrics of a flight, as well as taped conversations and sounds from the cockpit. An abnormal flame is seen coming out of the right engine of the Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 series aircraft as it prepares to land before crashing and bursting into flames at Muan International Airport in Muan, South Korea, on Sunday. | YONHAP / VIA AFP-JIJI Muan’s control tower warned of the risk of a bird strike at 8:57 a.m. local time, about two minutes before the pilot declared an emergency, officials said. The airport had four staffers working to prevent bird strikes at the time of the crash, including one outside the tower. Birds are an aviation hazard because they can be ingested into the turbine or damage other parts of the plane and cause engine failure. In 2009, an Airbus A320 landed in the Hudson River in New York after a bird strike damaged both engines, in what has become known as the “Miracle on the Hudson” because everyone on board survived. Jeju Air’s 15-year-old plane, registered HL8088, entered service with the carrier in 2017. It was initially delivered in 2009 to Irish discount airline Ryanair Holdings PLC, according to the Planespotters.net database. The jet was configured to seat as many as 189 passengers. Founded in 2005, Jeju Air operates 42 aircraft, according to its website. There was no sign of malfunction during regular maintenance checks, Kim E-Bae, chief executive officer of Jeju Air, said at a news briefing. The jet was returning from Bangkok overnight in a 4½ hour flight. The plane, which YTN said had been chartered by a local travel agency for a Christmas holiday trip, previously left Muan for the Thai capital on Saturday evening. Muan is a small regional airport located in the country’s south that opened in 2007. It was built to help connect cities including Gwangju and Mokpo and increased its regular service of international flights this year, including those of Jeju Air. The two surviving flight attendants were taken to hospital, and one of the two survivors is in intensive care unit with a thoracic spine fracture, the doctor at the hospital said in a press briefing. Boeing said it’s in contact with Jeju Air and ready to offer support. Aircraft manufacturers typically send specialists to crash sites to aid an investigation. Recovery of the victims, some of whom were ejected from the aircraft after the impact, has been completed and salvage crews are now searching the wreckage for passengers’ belongings, Yonhap said. Jeju Air CEO Kim E-bae (third from right) and other executives bow in apology ahead of a briefing in Seoul on Sunday. | YONHAP / VIA AFP-JIJI More than 1,500 people including police, military, coast guard and local government personnel are assisting at the crash site, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. The airport’s runway will remain closed in coming days. The accident is the deadliest passenger airline disaster in South Korea to date, surpassing the fatality toll from an Air China plane crash near Busan in 2002 that killed 129 people, according to the Aviation Safety Network. The crash is also among the worst globally this decade. South Korea is currently experiencing a deepening political crisis after its president provoked public outrage by briefly imposing martial law earlier this month. Acting President Choi Sang-mok declared a week of mourning. The crash is the second major air disaster in less than a week. An incident in Russian airspace led to the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger aircraft on Christmas Day, killing

Jimmy Carter, who rose from Georgia farmland to become the 39th president of the United States on a promise of national healing after the wounds of Watergate and Vietnam, then lost the White House in a cauldron of economic turmoil at home and crisis in Iran, died Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia. He was 100. The Carter Center in Atlanta announced his death. Carter, the longest-living president in American history, died nearly three months after he turned 100, becoming the first former commander in chief to reach the century mark. In August, his grandson, Jason Carter, told the Democratic National Convention that the former president was “holding on” and “though his body may be weak tonight, his spirit is as strong as ever” and he “can’t wait to vote for Kamala Harris.” Source link

Shohei Ohtani and his wife, Mamiko Tanaka — and, of course, Decoy, their famous dog — are adding another member to the team. The Los Angeles Dodgers star announced on Instagram on Saturday that he and his wife are expecting their first child. “Can’t wait for the little rookie to join our family soon!” Ohtani wrote on the post, which featured a picture of a baby onesie, baby shoes, a sonogram covered by an emoji and Decoy. Source link

Sushi and pizza, lists and rankings, sparkling new multilevel megacomplexes, peak tourism and the death rattle of old-school izakaya taverns: Just another year of dining out in Tokyo. With inbound tourism numbers again setting new records in 2024, restaurateurs have responded with a burst of new openings to accommodate all the visitors. By the reckoning of one trade magazine, more than 200 sushi restaurants have opened this year alone. One newcomer that has stood out from the pack is Sushi Oya, an elegant location discreetly tucked away off the main street of Kagurazaka, Shinjuku Ward. Chef Yoji Oya is an alumnus of the legendary Sushi Yoshitake in Tokyo’s Ginza district and brings all the requisite high-end skills, plus those vital connections with the best seafood wholesalers at the Toyosu Market. Having grown up in the United States, Oya boasts an international savoir faire, fluent English and years’ experience of working in Hong Kong. More important still, his restaurant — seven seats at the counter and six more in a private room — is designed with beautiful understatement. Source link

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to impose additional tariffs on imports, particularly from China and Mexico, has sparked concern among Japanese automakers with significant operations in Mexico. The United States’ goods and services trade deficit reached about $785 billion in 2023, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. By country, China accounted for the largest share, at about $250 billion, followed by Mexico, at about $160 billion. Trump has criticized bilateral trade deficits and campaigned on imposing steep tariffs — 60% on imports from China and over 100% on vehicles from Mexico. A key focus for Trump is the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, USMCA, a trade deal involving the three nations. The agreement includes “rules of origin” that exempt completed vehicles from tariffs if 75% or more of their main components are sourced within the three countries. Trump has expressed frustration over Chinese-made vehicles making their way into the U.S. market tariff-free via Mexico. Source link

Japan’s national high school soccer tournament is thriving after more than 100 years, attracting huge crowds, with millions watching on TV, and breeding future stars, despite professional clubs trying to lure away young talent. The annual tournament kicked off on Saturday and is still regarded as the pinnacle of amateur soccer, with young players dreaming of playing in the final in front of tens of thousands at National Stadium in Tokyo. Matches are a massive occasion for the whole school as student cheering squads wave flags, bang drums and roar on their teams in a spectacle of noise and color. Source link

Wajima, Ishikawa Pref. – Lacquerware maker Takaho Shoji hunches over his desk in the disaster-hit city of Wajima in central Japan, applying another layer of coating to a dark, wooden box. One brushstroke at a time, the 53-year-old is determined to bring life back to his remote community after a devastating New Year’s Day earthquake, followed by severe floods. “I need to do whatever I can to move forward with the reconstruction, and to continue this tradition and pass it on to the next generations,” said the soft-spoken father of two. Source link